Lidia Stoupel

Intern Reporter

There will be many flights this week because many athletes are leaving for Cyprus, where they will stay until Easter training. Except for departures there will also be arrivals, like the one of Pigi Devedji – 2008 bronze medal winner in Beijing, who is supposed to return from Africa on Friday or Saturday.

Three “doses”

The first ones to leave for Cyprus are Giorgos Tzougos and Giorgios Pomaski, who will take with them the jumpers Kosta Banioti, Voula Papahristou, Taso Makrinikola, Maroula Papageorgiou, and Antoni Mastora. They will stay in Cyprus until the Passionate Week for a general jump training session. Ploutarhos Sarslanidis will leave with his group on April 5^th. A week later, many sprinters will also leave, like last year’s 100m champion Manolis Koutzouklakis.

Pigi’s return

Meanwhile, Pigi Devedji is supposed to come back from Senegal at the end of the week. The bronze medalist is in Dakar, where IAAF has built a new sports center for successful athletes. The Greek champion accepted the invitation to go there and have a mini-training. By the end of the week, she will return and continue her training in Athens. This year, she will compete in not so many but important races. She will mainly focus on the triple jump and not so much on the long jump. She wants to keep winning medals on big competitions but a hard season is coming, so she prefers to protect herself for a bigger and more important competition like the World Championship in Berlin.